Author: root42

How To Learn SMD Soldering

There are two kinds of soldering PCBs: through hole and SMD. Through hole uses components with leads, which are threaded through holes (hence the name) in the PCB and then fixed to the PCB with solder. SMD uses Surface Mounted components. That is, very miniaturized components that are soldered onto the surface of the PCB, without using leads. 

Due to the small size of the components it is at first much harder to solder than for classic through hole parts. To save you from the misfortunes of failed projects, there are practice kits available. We will assemble one such example today and I will try to teach you the basics of SMD soldering as well as some more advanced tricks.

What is the best C64 SID Chip – For MS DOS?

The Innovation SSI-2001 was a very early PC sound card which appeared roughly during the release period of the Adlib. It was supported only by a handful of games and disappeared very quickly from the market. What makes it notable is the fact that it used the MOS6581 also known as the SID as its core. This chip was better known as the chip that drove the Commodore 64’s sound. Hence this card is particularly interesting. Early this year I hand soldered a replica of this card, known as the Renovation SSI-2001. Today we want to test drive a couple of games and compare different SID implementations: An original MOS6581, a SwinSID nano and the ArmSID. Can the much cheaper emulated SIDs hold a candle to the expensive and ever rarer original in this setting? We also take a short stab at getting the SID to produce a tone using MS DOS QBasic!

Retro Game Review: The Curse of Rabenstein

I am a big fan of interactive fiction, better known as text adventures. I am also a big fan of MS DOS games. And retro games in general. And when there is a new release of a retro game, a text adventure, which supports MS DOS and other platforms, I am all ears. Enter: The Curse of Rabenstein. A brand new release with a nice physical big box with lots of goodies. But is the game also a goodie? Let’s see…

Let’s Code MS DOS 0x15: Sine Tables

I got a question in the YouTube comments about the sine tables that we used for a few animations, like the Copper Bars, the Smooth Scrolling etc. In this episode I try to explain why and how to create sine tables. The idea is to speed up computations, since computing the sine or cosine — even with an FPU — takes an awfully long time on early MS DOS machines.

Amiga 500: Booting From External Floppy

After the 1084S monitor, my Amiga 500 gets an external Gotek USB Floppy Drive emulator. To be able to boot from it, we install a DF0 switcher. Many demos and games on the Amiga can only be booted from the first floppy drive, DF0. The external drive is called DF1. With the switcher we can toggle the external drive to be either DF0 or DF1.

Let’s Code MS DOS 0x14: Hello World in x86 Assembly

In the last live stream we did some Turbo C inline assembly, which was pretty fun. But let’s today use an actual pure assembler: the Borland Turbo Assembler. And let’s demystify some of the things surrounding assembly language. It is actually not that hard, so let’s write a hello world program, using assembly, for MS DOS!

Retro Game Review 12: Galagon for the Atari 2600

Champ Games has delivered another quality homebrew title for the Atari 2600: Galagon. It’s a port of the arcade classic Galaga. Featuring pretty much 100% spot on enemies, playmodes, sounds and graphics, it is a fun little vertical shooter. The game supports single and two player modes with varying degrees of difficulty. Let’s unbox it and have a look!